


Since You've Been Gone

by Vae



Category: Sagas of Sundry: Dread (Web Series)
Genre: Crueltide, Gen, Haunting, Horror, Sat (Sagas of Sundry: Dread) - Freeform, Witchcraft, canon typical disregard for spiritual traditions, the most eclectic banishment ritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:41:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28137114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/pseuds/Vae
Summary: It's been nearly a year. Kayden's still alive, mostly. Tanner's dead, but not completely gone.
Relationships: Kayden & Sat (Sagas of Sundry: Dread), Kayden & Tanner Sills, Sat & Tanner Sills
Comments: 11
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Since You've Been Gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infernal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernal/gifts).



> Dear Infernal, thank you so much for giving so much detail in your letter - it made it an absolutely joy to write as a Yuletide assignment. There were more ideas than could fit in here, but I hope you like what I came up with for these prickly boys.

Kayden hated summer. 

He'd never liked summer. The long weeks away from school somehow managed to be even worse than the long weeks at school, filled with summer jobs he couldn't hold down while his friends - _friends_ \- worked in stores and cafes and animal shelters because of course fucking Raina was good with animals. Summer now was worse than summers used to be. Summer now didn't mean the end of term. Summer now meant the anniversary of all the crazy shit that happened last year, and the year before that.

June now meant a year since Tanner died.

No, fuck that, Kayden couldn't shy away from the reality of that even in his own head. June now meant a year since Tanner was fucking ripped apart by monsters as the rest of them had run for their pathetic lives, just the way Tanner had told them to.

On his best days, Kayden could almost believe his life had been worth saving. He'd got clean. He had a job. He had a place to live, and it wasn't even that much of a shithole. The walls maybe had a touch of black mold, but that was manageable as long as Kayden wiped them down with bleach each time he saw it. The window didn't rattle most of the time, there weren't any mice or rats, his bed was clear of bed bugs, and he hardly ever saw any roaches. It was a bit basic, sure, but he didn't need anything more than basic. It wasn't like he had that much stuff to store anywhere.

He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and let his breath out in a resigned sigh. "Okay, fine. Show yourself if we're going to do this again. Aren't you meant to wait until, like, new moon, or full moon, or that kind of shit?"

"That kind of shit." Tanner laughed, just as soft and bitter as Kayden had ever heard it in life. He didn't fade into view, and Kayden couldn't see through him. If it weren't for the fact that Tanner had just fucking _appeared_ \- and the fact that Kayden had seen him killed - Kayden would have sworn that Tanner was as real as he'd ever been. "Have you been talking to witches again?"

"Only Sat." Kayden dropped heavily onto his bed, one hand behind him for support as he looked up at Tanner's ghost. Spirit. Whatever. "She met some at the game store, said she'd been learning some shit."

"That explains why I couldn't get into her place." Death hadn't changed any of Tanner's nervous energy, hadn't taken his habit of flexing his fingers or rocking slightly on his heels, so rarely entirely still. "It must be warded."

"That's a thing?" Kayden made a mental note to ask Sat about that, thought about how he'd explain why he wanted to know, and abandoned the idea. 

"Apparently so." Tanner looks around again, moving across the room to look towards the few photos Kayden had taped to the wall. "These are mine."

"No," Kayden said, his denial instant and instinctive, rejection of what sounded like a claim, before he could process Tanner's meaning. "I mean, yeah. Kind of. You took them. I printed them."

"All of them?" Tanner swung around to face Kayden, his expression intent. "Did you print everything I took? Both years?"

"Everything I had." Kayden was uncomfortably aware that he didn't have all the film Tanner took, that some of it had been sacrificed for that final ritual. He wasn't even sure whether Tanner knew that, knew anything about how everything had turned out except for knowing that Sat and Kayden had survived somehow, made it back to the truck somehow, made it back to town somehow. "Why? Why does it matter? You're gone. It's over. Printing more of your fucking photos isn't going to change any of that. You weren't even _in_ any of the photos, you and your fucking control freak need to control every image you created, everything about how you were going to remember that night. How you were going to remember _us_. We _know_ what happened, none of us are ever going to forget. Believe me, we've tried." Apart from Darby, probably, because Darby had been convinced it was a positive event, something intended to give her purpose.

Shitty fucking purpose.

"It matters now because it always mattered," Tanner said, taking a step towards Kayden. 

Kayden flinched back before he could stop himself, instinct repelled by the memory of his friend, by the perversion of everything that Tanner had been distilled into the apparition before him, then forced himself upright again, chin lifting in determination not to be cowed by it, memories of a letter flashing into his mind. A letter, a knife, a ritual. "Show me your arm."

Tanner stopped and tilted his head, a strange smile twisting his lips. "Oh, right, the marks of friendship carved into flesh. What difference would it make to you if I had the mark?"

It was more that it would have made a difference to Kayden if Tanner didn't, and Kayden _really_ didn't like the expression on Tanner's face. It wasn't unrecognizable, he'd seen the hints of bitterness, but it had always been masked before, the cruelty hidden behind a mask of hurt innocence. He stopped himself from looking across the room to the traffic cone in the corner, stupid sentimentality he couldn't put aside, and dug his fingers into his bed covers. "Show me."

"Why?" the apparition said, the smile only spreading. "What would it prove?"

"I don't know," Kayden snapped. He still wanted to see it. The increasingly heavy, rapid beat of his heart in his chest wanted to see it, the pressure ringing in his ears wanted to see it, the tension running through his muscles wanted to see it, all of him wanted that fucking smile to disappear and for the spirit to look more like the Tanner he remembered. "Show me."

"Ah." Tanner's smile softened. "You're always so eloquent, Kayden. I guess you're still as in touch with your feelings as ever. But you've asked three times, so I'll show you."

Kayden latched onto that piece of information desperately, watching as Tanner pushed back his sleeve. There, carved into pallid skin, was a single digit, the number 1, still red and raised, still scabbed over, a wound that never had the chance to heal. "It's you."

"It's me," Tanner agreed. "I want to see yours."

"No," Kayden said, feeling the truth of it heavy and bitter at the back of his tongue. "No, you don't." He unbuttoned his sleeve anyway, rolling it back, pulling away the tangle of leather bangles that disguised the marks from anyone who managed to get a casual glance. The two Xs were still there, a permanent reminder, but less blatant than Tanner's mark. They'd faded back to white, jagged silver streaks that had healed paler than the rest of his skin, slightly raised to the touch but not enough for sight. 

Tanner bent, peering closer, never quite getting close enough to make contact, though Kayden could see Tanner's hand raised, fingers twitching as if he wants to make a grab at Kayden's wrist. "Is hers like that, too?"

There wasn't any point in asking which 'her' Tanner meant. There'd only ever been one her for Tanner, only one her he'd ask about. Kayden tugged his sleeve down again sharply, not wanting to leave the mark exposed any longer. It had meant something, at the time, although he wasn't sure what it meant nearly a year on. He'd changed, Sat had changed, the mark had changed, and Tanner... well, Tanner apparently hadn't changed. Apart from being dead. "Can't you see for yourself?"

Tanner scowled. "I can't get a clear view of her. It's like she's obscured, like there's thick glass distorting her image every time I try."

"Good," Kayden said, not letting the word land as savagely as he wanted it to. Light worked, too, light to sound like he didn't desperately care that Sat was effectively protected from Tanner's spirit.

"It's not _good_." Tanner looked down at Kayden, his eyes dark. "I loved her. I still love her."

"Bull _shit_ ," Kayden said firmly, dropping his scarred wrist down behind himself, hand braced against the bed. "You never loved her. You barely even knew her any more, none of us did then, we were all too scared to let anyone know us. You loved your idea of her."

"I loved _her_ ," Tanner said, moving closer, and Kayden belatedly realized that maybe pissing off a ghost this close to the anniversary of his death might not be the greatest idea. Not that knowing that had ever stopped him from doing anything before. "I loved her, I knew her before she met you, before she changed, and she's still that girl underneath it all."

"You know, I always thought death was meant to make you see things more clearly." Kayden held himself still, refusing to back away from Tanner's anger. So far, Tanner, or Tanner's ghost, or whatever spirit was presenting Tanner's appearance, hadn't hurt him, hadn't even touched him, but that didn't make supernatural anger any less intimidating. Kayden didn't take intimidation gracefully. "Maybe she's still that girl, but she's so much more as well, because she's learned, and she's lived, and she's grown, and she's _grieved_ for who she thought you were."

"She _knew_ who I was," Tanner insisted. "She always knew who I was."

"Maybe that's why she started spending less time with you," Kayden retorted before he could stop himself, briefly considered regretting it, and decided not to. He'd never coddled Tanner's sensitive feelings when Tanner was alive, and he couldn't see any reason to start after he was dead. "Or maybe not even you knew who you really were."

"And you do?" Tanner's voice rose, louder as he leaned in closer, a reminder that even if Kayden could hear everything Tanner said, all anyone outside the room heard was Kayden's side of the conversation, and he really didn't want to be homeless again right before the anniversary.

Closing his eyes, disregarding the apparent threat of Tanner looming over him, Kayden took a deep breath, forcing himself back under control, bringing the volume of his voice back down. "Fuck, no, but maybe I would have liked to have the chance to find out. For everyone to find out."

There was silence, and Kayden risked opening his eyes again to discover that Tanner had retreated, his shoulders rising and falling as if he was breathing heavily. Some instincts apparently outlasted biological necessity. Kayden shifted his balance forward, still cautious, knees splayed apart so he could link his hands loosely between them. 

"Maybe," Tanner said eventually, pulled his spectral glasses off, and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "Maybe I would have liked to have the chance to find out, too, but I wanted _you_ to get out. Not just Sat, all of you. And you're here, so I guess you did."

"As out as any of us were going to get," Kayden agreed with a chuckle that sounded dry and brittle even to his own ears. "Fuck, you think any of us really got out the first time? I didn't. Darby didn't. _Raina_ definitely fucking didn't, and I thought she was holding it together the best of all of us. Sat left part of herself there, and that's why we all went back, right? Because there wasn't a life left for us out here."

"There definitely isn't for me now," Tanner said with the light laugh that Kayden had always hated. The laugh that said Tanner was speaking some truth close to his heart, something that truly mattered to him, but wanted to hide how much it mattered. "I went back to prove to myself it wasn't real, you know that? So I guess that didn't work out too well."

"Tell me about it," Kayden muttered. "I'm not going back there, Tanner. I don't care what part of me's back there now, it's staying, I'm living without it. I'm not going back again. Not this year, not _ever_."

"They say third time's the charm, don't they?" Tanner said, his lips twisting in a mockery of a smile. "Third time pays for all. You took my camera, I know you did." His hand strayed to his neck, empty of the customary camera strap. "It's why I don't have it now. There's still some film left undeveloped."

"No," Kayden said, putting as much venom as he can manage into the word, a growl behind it where he can't hiss. "No, I'm not going back. There's no film. We destroyed the film that was in your camera that night. Pulled it out, spilled blood over it, it's _gone_ in that last ritual to appease that shaman and Darby's fucking goat man. There's _no more_."

"It's... gone?" The expression on Tanner's face was close enough to shock for Kayden to believe it was genuine, or at least as genuine as anything that the spirit presenting as Tanner had shown him. "Every photo I took last year, my last night... is gone?"

"Substitute for your blood in the ritual, it was the closest thing we could think of." Kayden considered shifting that _we_ to _I_ and claiming his responsibility in destroying the undeveloped film, and dismissed the idea. "We needed something to represent you."

"Gone," Tanner repeated flatly, shock fading to something that looked like disbelief. "But the others, you said you developed the others, not the ones I did at school but the films we found, the ones from the first year."

"Probably not to your standards," Kayden muttered. He'd spent hours, days, blackmailed someone into giving him access to the dark room at the community college, studied books in the library to discover how to turn the tiny negative images on Tanner's film into photographs. The resulting pictures had mostly been blessedly out of focus and, in several cases, partly obscured by one of Raina's fingers. "But yeah. Yeah, I did."

"You have to destroy them," Tanner said, barely letting Kayden finish speaking, his words tripping out fast as soon as Kayden had voiced the confirmation. "All of them. Every print, every film, every negative, you _have_ to destroy them. Not just throw them out. Destroy them."

"Why?" Kayden glanced uneasily towards the wall where the photos were taped, where Sat's face was pressed next to Tanner's, where they were all huddled together shielded by ignorance of what was to come. There was a protective charm dangling next to them, something Sat had made and given him once he'd promised to actually keep it. Kayden had no idea what was in it, but like fuck he was going to turn down protection of any kind after what they'd seen. 

Tanner turned to look as well, taking a half-step towards them, the expression on his face softening some. "They're a bond. A tie, a connection, a... I don't even know what the right word is, but they're keeping that connection alive. Something that brings me back here, something that keeps you connected to that place."

"More than this does?" Kayden held his arm up, letting his sleeve fall clear of his scar again. "If anything's a connection, surely this is."

Tanner shook his head. "You took those _out_ with you, they're part of you. My photos, they're images of the .. the... where it all happened. We made the marks to bind to each other, but my photos bind to the land, to the spirits, to the whole _thing_." He paused, licked his lips, and looked back towards Kayden's face, his eyes dark, his jaw tense. "To me."

"Of course they bind to _you_ , you're our _friend_." Kayden lifted his hand, letting his sleeve fall back again, the scar of that friendship still visible. The few photos of Tanner were all any of them had left, reminders of who they'd been to each other, evidence that they weren't all simply crazy, and fuck knew that Kayden needed that reminder sometimes. 

"Who never left the mountains." Tanner held his hand out between them, palm not quite raised, chin dipping down as he closed his eyes. "Don't. I didn't. I _know_ that, but... don't give me your shit about all of us being dead already, okay? Because I really _am_ dead, Kayden. Trust me, I know the difference between dead and your nihilistic bullshit."

"And yet..." Kayden tipped his head back to look up at Tanner, his hands spread wide. "Here you are. Right here. Just like I am."

"Yeah, and you know _how_ I'm able to be here and not out in the park?" Tanner's lips twisted into something unpleasant, not precisely a smile but not entirely alien to one. 

Kayden's stomach twisted, heavy and cold, nausea stirring, and he purposely didn't look across to the wall where Tanner's photos were taped. Tanner's photos, taken by Tanner, taken out in the park, that Kayden had brought out into the light. "Well, shit."

Tanner laughed, short and hard, hollow. "You get it now? What you've done?"

"You know, persuading myself that life is worth keeping going was so much easier without you reminding me what a complete shit I am," Kayden muttered, took a breath, and forced himself to keep looking at Tanner's face, that infuriating disdainful superior curl of his lips. "Why the fuck did you - _do_ you, fuck, you're still doing it - always think the worst of me? What the fuck did I ever do to _you_?"

"Maybe if you want me not to assume the worst, you should figure it out," Tanner retorted. "And maybe you should work out how you're going to get hold of my camera and all the photos it's taken in three days."

Kayden's blood ran cold, his spine stiffening. " _All_ of them?"

Tanner shrugged. "You made it a link when you used the film in the ritual, whoever decided to do that." He paused, eyes narrowing. " _You_ did it. You, Kayden, not you, collective."

"It needed something from all of us." Kayden forced the words out around the tightness in his throat. "It took blood, for the rest of us. For you, your photos seemed like the closest thing."

"And _you_ made that connection between my photos and my essence." Tanner tipped his head back for a moment before leveling his focus back on Kayden. "You built this path. So you have to destroy it."

Swallowing hard around the aching thickness in his throat, Kayden couldn't shift his mind from the awareness that Tanner's camera was so fucking close to him already, in an old cardboard box stuffed under his bed. Fuck, the thought of destroying that, destroying the images, losing every physical evidence that what had happened had been real, that Tanner had been part of it, was re-opening the hollow places inside him that he thought he'd sealed over in the last year. Part of him was selfishly glad to have forged the connection and given Tanner a route back to them. Back to him. "The photos, and the film."

"The camera as well," Tanner said softly. "Find it, and make sure it's destroyed, wherever it is, and every print you made from that film. Because if I can find this path out, what else might follow me?"

Kayden buried his face in his hands, swearing under his breath, and looked up to find himself alone.

~~~

If there was one thing to be grateful for, Kayden was thankful he hadn't been able to bring himself to actually use Tanner's camera. He'd thought about it enough times, wondered whether he'd feel the ghost of Tanner's hands under his own if he'd lifted it to his face, wondered what he'd see if he looked through the viewfinder, wondered, even, if a new roll of film would fit into the mechanism or whether the camera would reject anything that hadn't been touched by Tanner. There were new rolls of film sitting sealed in neat plastic canisters in the bottom of Kayden's bag, and they'd stayed there since he'd bought them.

It meant there weren't any photos to track down, no new prints that had been distributed. Kayden hadn't even shared out the prints that he'd developed from Tanner's films, though Sat had seen them once and cried for a solid hour afterwards. Darby had asked about them, and Kayden had lied, glib words twisting his tongue about film accidentally exposed to light, rather than dealing with the guilt-tripping accusations that he'd expected her to hurl at him if he'd told the truth: he simply didn't trust Darby not to go off on another journey into the mountains based on something she thought she'd seen in the darkness that filled most of the frame in all the photos Tanner had taken since the first year.

Raina hadn't asked, and Kayden hadn't offered. Whether it was common sense or cowardice on Raina's part, Kayden grudgingly respected her determination to move forwards and her absolute denial of any attempt to talk about what had happened either year. Raina was in a good place, and fuck knew at least once of them deserved it.

There was no way to avoid calling Sat. Kayden's next night off was before the anniversary, which meant he'd have a time to call when he wasn't working and Sat wasn't due to be working and neither of them were asleep, and entirely failed to find a way to explain why he needed to know how to _spiritually_ destroy something as well as physically destroying it without mentioning Tanner.

"Kayden," Sat asked, sounding worried. "Are you completely sure this is actually Tanner? I mean, you're not going to actually _open_ a connection by destroying his things?"

"He was pretty fixated on you, so, yeah, I'm fairly sure it was him," Kayden said wryly. "He said he'd tried to talk to you, but your protections are working."

"That's good to know." Sat didn't sound reassured. "About the protections, not the fixation. Do you want me to bring you some more wards? Do you want me to be there when you destroy his stuff?"

Kayden did, in fact, desperately want Sat to be there, and not to have to do everything on his own, but he wanted her safely separate and away from the spirit more than he wanted her support. "No, I think this one has to be just me. Either that or all of us, and I'm not asking Raina to bring Darby back here."

"God, no, don't do that," Sat agreed hastily. "You've still got your lighter, right?"

Kayden looked across to the shelf where his neglected lighter sat, still half-full of lighter fluid. "I've still got my lighter, yeah."

"Okay, good." Sat takes an audible deep breath. "There's some other stuff you'll need, I'll bring it over."

It was a strange collection of stuff that Kayden was fairly sure didn't all come from the same religion, and some more stuff that he wasn't sure was his to use, but it didn't take up much space in his bag. He stuffed it into the front pocket, the camera and photos into the main bag with a bottle of water, just in case, and drove out of the town.

~~~  
It was a clear night. The moon, neither full or new, shone down cold and white through the trees as Kayden parked up in the clearing they'd used the year before, and the year before. It was easier being there on his own. None of it was in any way easy but, without his friends to keep safe, there was less reason not to be reckless with his own safety. Less reason to stay in the truck. Less reason to turn around and get the fuck out of the park.

Kayden blew out a breath and swung out into the night, pulling Tanner's camera from his bag, and held it up so the moonlight hit it, gleaming off the chrome ring around the lens. "Come on, then. I've got it. Don't you want to see it one more time?"

Tanner faded out of the shadows, noiseless as he appeared. His clothes never changed, always the outfit he'd worn on the night he died, his jacket back around his own shoulders instead of draped around Sat's as a shield from the night. "You found it."

"Never lost it." Wildness surged up inside Kayden, adrenaline, fear, bravado, a kind of strange _relief_ that he was back where life was lived with such intensity, stronger for being risked, an addiction harder to kick than anything he'd gone to a support group for. "This, your photos from the first year, the ones I developed... I've had them all year, Tanner. All _year_ , and you never came for them." Never came for him. "Thought you might show up at Halloween. What was wrong with that, is it too cliche for you?"

"Not personal enough." Tanner's eyes were fixed on the camera as he approached, slow, sure, silent steps over the uneven ground. "You don't give a shit about Halloween, but you'll see me now. Now matters."

It wasn't quite technically the anniversary, not quite a full year, but Kayden really wasn't going to argue over that, given how swiftly his dread of June had risen. "Now matters," he agreed quietly, and hooked his fingers around the camera strap, holding it out at arm's length towards Tanner, the body of the camera dangling. "And I guess this matters, if you came back for it."

Tanner shot Kayden a look that was unpleasantly like disappointment, then his fingers closed around the camera, and _made contact_. Kayden could feel the slight tug on the camera strap when Tanner took hold, and his breath caught sharp in his throat, body tensing with the instinct to drop the camera and move back.

"Well," Kayden said, his voice carefully controlled and even. "This is new. Or could you do this all along?"

Tanner's mouth twisted towards a smile, and he brought his free hand up towards Kayden's arm. Kayden braced himself, ready to pull himself free, but Tanner's hand slid straight through Kayden's forearm, leaving only a faint coolness and the evidence of Kayden's eyes that it had even happened. "I told you. The camera's mine."

"And I'm not." It should have been a relief to Kayden, shouldn't have caused an unpleasant lurch in his chest to state that out loud, but Kayden's life had never had much to do with _should_.

"Having a consciousness means you have to make a conscious choice," Tanner said dryly, and tugged on the camera. Kayden could feel that, the force of Tanner's pull through the strap still in his hand.

Kayden made the conscious choice to curl his fingers around the strap. "You said I have to destroy it."

"It has to _be_ destroyed," Tanner countered, pedantic bastard that he was, and kept the tension on the strap. "I could destroy it."

"Could you, though?" Kayden looked up, focusing in on Tanner's face, his traitorous memory supplying _do you want to damage property or shall I?_. Maybe the Tanner he'd known had been physically capable of destroying the camera, but the spirit in front of him was more and less than the Tanner Kayden had thought he'd known, and Kayden didn't trust him for a second to have the mental determination to destroy it, not only for the camera Tanner had loved, but as a connection to the world he'd been abruptly, prematurely torn from. 

Tanner's smile flashed out for a moment, a soft laugh barely audible in the quiet clearing, then he shook his head. "Do you trust me?"

"Fuck no," Kayden said instantly. "Not with that. I don't even know if I trust you to be Tanner, I definitely don't trust you to destroy the camera if you are. I don't want to _give_ you the camera if you aren't."

Tanner's grip on the camera slackened for a moment, and he lifted his eyes to meet Kayden's, something like amusement on his face. "Did _you_ develop a sense of self preservation?"

"Someone had to," Kayden said, avoiding a direct answer. Someone had needed to have a sense of preserving the others last year as well, and he'd probably never forget the strength of that drive to just get everyone home safe and alive. Everyone remaining, anyway. "No one else was going to do it for me."

"I guess not." Tanner released the camera slowly, taking a step back. "Did you bring the film, as well?"

"Everything you asked for." Kayden held his bag up in demonstration without giving any more details. Sure, he'd brought everything that Tanner had asked for, and a few more things besides, but he wasn't about to tell Tanner about those. Not there, not then, not when the time and place were so close to where shit had gone down the year before, and the year before that.

Third time lucky, wasn't that what people said?

Kayden swung the bag onto his shoulder, looking intently at Tanner. Every detail was as he remembered. Every detail. Everything, from the ridiculous shine on Tanner's hair, to the crumple of his shirt collar, to the ever present tension in his jaw. Kayden still couldn't let himself completely trust that the vision he was seeing was his friend. "Shall we do this?"

Tanner closed his eyes for a moment, then lifted his chin and met Kayden's gaze, entirely steady. "Whenever you're ready."

"I'm not going in," Kayden said hastily, looking towards the fence for a second before snapping his attention back to Tanner, his heart turning over with the sudden fear that Tanner might have disappeared, or moved closer. "Not through or over the fence, not back up to the mountain, not the cabin."

"You don't have to," Tanner said, his lips twisted in something close to amusement. "You're already here. That's enough."

Kayden wasn't sure he liked the sound of that, but he let his breath out anyway, fingers curling into a fist around the camera strap, then reached into his bag to pull out his knife. Sat had offered him something ceremonial, something with a name he couldn't remember, but she'd also said that intent was what mattered most, and intent was something Kayden had a lot of. More of it when the knife was his own, familiar to his hand.

Tanner took a single step closer, soundless on the clearing floor. "What's that for?"

"Protection," Kayden said, as nonchalantly as he could manage. He'd understood that much. Fuck knew what a circle was meant to do for protection, but a good, sharp, solid knife? Yeah, he could protect himself with that. "You want to be inside it, or outside?"

Tanner stared at the blade, then back at Kayden's face, his smirk banished to something that looked more like shock. "You'd trust me inside?"

"Fuck no," Kayden repeated, and laughed, because shit, it was absurd, it was all absurd, but if he had to go down to protect everyone else, he'd do that, and if there was any chance that the spirit really was Tanner, Sat would never forgive him for not offering up as much protection as he could.

Kayden wouldn't forgive himself either, but that mattered less. He'd done a lot of things that he'd never forgive himself for, and he lived with those every day. For a given value of living. 

"No," he said again, more quietly. "But I'd trust you inside more than I'd trust you outside if you're something that's going to join forces with whatever else this is going to attract."

Tanner nodded slowly, and took another step closer, then another when Kayden held his ground. "How close should I get?"

Kayden told himself that he was imagining anything beyond the surface meaning of the words. "It's going to be nine foot across, so inside that, and not close enough to get in my way."

"I'm not sure that tradition's going to work here," Tanner warned, and moved closer again, stopping about five feet away from Kayden. It wasn't any closer than the spirit had ever been in Kayden's room, but it _felt_ closer, something about Tanner more vibrant out under the night sky.

"Neither am I, but I'm still going to fucking try." Kayden took a breath, slung the camera around his neck, glanced up at the stars, and held onto the bag as he pressed the tip of his knife to the earth to the north of Tanner. It wasn't an exact circle, and it wasn't exactly nine feet across at every point, but Kayden focused every bit of intent he had on the blade as he walked the slow circle with Tanner at the center.

Nine feet across had never felt so small. Kayden pushed away his doubts about sanity and rationality and tried to believe with his whole heart that the circle he drew would form a barrier. Invisible, maybe, but still _there_. When the ragged line in the dirt reconnected to the start, Kayden staggered back with the shock of feeling the connection complete, his arm jumping slightly as the light breeze he'd hardly noticed disappeared, and the temperature inside the circle rose noticeably.

Tanner hadn't moved, but he lifted a hand when the circle snapped closed, something like wonder on his face as he tipped his head back to look around. "Holy shit, it worked."

"It worked," Kayden agreed grimly. It worked, something had worked, but this was only the first step and if he'd actually managed to call enough energy to form a circle of protection, there was every chance that he'd drawn more attention than he wanted.

Keeping a distance from Tanner, staying inside the circle, Kayden reached into his bag and pulled out the prints along with the bundle of white sage and his lighter. Without the breeze, it didn't take long to light the sage to a smolder, and he glanced around quickly before waving the sage so the smoke spilled over the photos, shiny surface dulling and beginning to curl slightly. All the elements, Sat had said. All of them. 

It made sense to start with the photos. The photos were the end product, the thing created most recently, and Kayden hoped they'd be the easiest connection to destroy. They were indirect, part of the site but made manifest somewhere else. "Move. I want to do this in the center."

Sat hadn't said he'd need to be in the middle of the circle, but something about that felt right, and Kayden wasn't about to ignore intuition like that. His hands were unsteady as he dropped the photos to the ground, fingers stained with the smoke from their surface, and it took several attempts to get the lighter to produce a strong enough flame for them to catch fire. Long enough for the metal to heat up, and it had been enough time since Kayden had last smoked up that the calluses on his thumb had faded away, another physical reminder of the past removed. He was going to have a blister from the heat, and he'd barely started.

Looking up, Kayden saw Tanner close to the edge of the circle, still inside the line in the dirt, back turned to Kayden and the photographs. "See anything?"

"Not yet," Tanner said, his voice tight. "It's not... I don't exactly _see_ them, but..."

Right. Sat had mentioned something about that as well, but Kayden hadn't really been paying much attention to her talk about third eyes and expanding the consciousness. He'd tried a few things to expand his consciousness in the past, and he was physically aching to have those things available now, even with the knowledge that he'd screw up any progress he'd made by giving in to the ache. It was all theoretical, anyway. Kayden didn't have any supplies any more, nothing left except his lighter. "Sense anything, then."

The photos curled and smoked, finally reduced to ashes, and Kayden let out a breath of relief before uncapping the bottle of water in his bag and carefully pouring some over them. Not enough for them to spread, just enough to take away the remaining heat from the flames. Air, fire, earth, water. Time to move on.

"There's something," Tanner said slowly. "Something moving, it's... keep going. Keep _going_."

Kayden kept going. He couldn't be sure how long he'd got before whatever it was came to interrupt, and the more he'd destroyed, the better chance he'd have. The negatives he'd used to create the prints were next, curling faster in the smoke, flaring up more hungrily to the flame, still unsettlingly silent as white and yellow danced up with an unsettling hint of green licking towards Kayden's fingers. He cursed under his breath, using one boot to push one strip of film back towards the rest as it curled in the heat, rolling away towards Tanner. "Did you do that?"

"I didn't do anything," Tanner said. He still hadn't moved, still hadn't looked towards Kayden or his precious photos, though his head lifted and shoulders tensed when Kayden tipped water on the malformed pellets left from burning the film. "It's not enough, I can still _feel_ them."

Kayden swore. Air, fire, water... shit, earth, he hadn't done anything with the earth. Hastily, he dug his fingers into the loose soil, scooping handfuls of it over the remnants. Ashes and twisted plastic, still hot to the touch as he scrubbed earth over them, damp from the water he'd poured. He didn't want to bury them, didn't want to leave any trace of them behind in the park, but if he could cover them, at least for now, it would be something. 

"That's it," Tanner said, quiet and intent. He sounded closer, but Kayden wasn't pausing long enough to look up to find out whether Tanner had moved. "That's... they're gone. Oh, shit, they're gone."

Definitely right, then. Kayden let his breath out slowly, careful not to disturb the soil, and reached for the camera with muddy fingers. "Just this, then."

"Just my camera," Tanner agreed. Kayden managed not to flinch back when he saw pale fingers reaching for the camera body beside his own, when he felt the pull that was Tanner taking hold. "It won't burn."

"It won't have to," Kayden said, and grabbed for the smoldering sage, keeping tight hold of the camera. "Let go, Tanner."

The fingers didn't move, and Kayden risked a look up towards where he thought Tanner's face would be. It was closer than he'd expected, and Tanner wasn't looking at the camera. Instead, Tanner's eyes were fixed, dark and intent, on Kayden's face. 

"I don't want to," Tanner said quietly, and his fingers twitched, the camera twitched in Kayden's hold. 

"You _have_ to." Kayden held on, tugging at the camera. "That's why you came to me, right? You have to let go. I have to destroy this."

"It's all I've got left." Tanner's lips curved slightly, not quite a smile, his eyes still steady on Kayden's face. "Don't you understand, Kayden? There's nothing else. Just this. This is all that's keeping me here."

"And that's why you have to let go," Kayden repeated, keeping his voice steady even as his temper flared, fear rising cold in his chest at the sound of something beyond the circle he'd drawn out, a circle that suddenly felt like very little protection, especially with Tanner _inside_ its boundaries. "For Sat, remember? To keep her safe."

"For Sat," Tanner echoed softly, and he gave a dry laugh. "Right. For Sat. That's why I came to you."

Kayden grabbed the camera tighter, and brought the sage in closer, tipping the tied bundle to let the smoke lick over the plastic body. There wasn't any film left inside, nothing left that was flammable, but he could see the smoke leaving dark marks over the viewfinder and the lens, and over Tanner's fingers in the moments before Tanner swore and pulled his hand away. 

"What _is_ that?" Tanner asked, cradling his hand in close to his body.

"Something the shaman might recognize," Kayden muttered. That fucking shaman, and it wasn't Kayden's tradition, wasn't Kayden's ritual to work, but the shaman was part of the land, part of everything around there, and that was why Kayden hadn't argued for too long when Sat had pressed it into his hand. "Cleansing with air, motherfucker."

Cautiously, Tanner held his hand out again, not touching the camera, just sliding his fingers through the smoke as Kayden made sure that it touched every part of the camera body and strap. "I can feel it."

"Hallelujah," Kayden said under his breath, and dropped the sage bundle, rolling it towards where Tanner was crouched. "Wonder if you'll feel the fire, too."

"It won't burn," Tanner said again.

"And the smoke didn't destroy it either, that's not the _point_." At least, it hadn't been the point when Sat had tried to explain it. Kayden flicked his lighter, cursing when the hot metal of the wheel burned against his thumb and still needed three tries to manage a flame, a heat that intensified as he tried to make sure to pass it over every inch of the camera's surface. It didn't burn, but the casing cover bubbled and twisted, strap shrinking as it to try to escape the heat, and Kayden had to drop it to the ground and kick it on its side to be sure the fire had touched every piece of it, finally pulling the casing open and running the flame over the inside as well to be sure.

"The point," Kayden said, trying not to look up at the sounds he desperately doesn't want to hear coming from beyond his circle, "the point is that I _will_ destroy this fucking thing."

"Then you'd better do it fast." Tanner's boots were beginning to be audible as well, no longer soundless as his feet moved against the mess of ash and remains on the ground, and Kayden would swear that the ashes moved in response. 

Fast. Shit. Kayden tried to take a deep breath to steady himself, coughing against the fumes rising from the camera, and dumped the rest of the bottle of water over the camera, dropping his lighter so he could rub the water over as much as possible while touching it as little as possible, heat strong enough that he could feel his hands smarting. He'd have blisters later, and he was almost thankful for that. It felt like this was something that _should_ cost more than his racing heart and rising anger at the creatures who'd torn Tanner from the world he should have been part of for decades to come.

"Kayden..." Tanner warned, and Kayden looked up, and wished he hadn't. 

The things approaching his circle were horribly familiar. They pushed through the boundary fence with little apparent effort, and Kayden's stomach turned sour at the realization that the flap they were pushing through was the same one he'd cut the year before. "Are they coming for me, or for you?"

"I don't think they really care," Tanner said, taking a step back, away from the edge of the circle, towards Kayden and the mess that was still recognizable as a camera. "They didn't care last year, I was just the one they could reach."

"The circle will hold," Kayden said, willing himself to believe it. Dropping back into a crouch, he frantically scooped soil over the blackened camera body and strap, covering it over, loosely buried. So close. So nearly done. "It's going to hold. It's got to hold."

"But if the camera's the conduit..." Tanner's voice rose higher, thinner. 

If the camera was the conduit into the world, the camera was the conduit into the circle as well, and they were both fucked, and Kayden refused to let himself be turned into a spirit who'd show up the next year to ask Sat to perform the same ritual for him. "Shut _up_."

"But if it _is_ ," Tanner insisted. 

"Then we fucking _destroy_ it," Kayden said fiercely, flipped his knife in his hand, and dragged the blade through the camera strap, both sides, slicing across the singed leather pad at the back. 

"It's _my_ conduit, too," Tanner said plaintively.

Kayden glanced up, at Tanner, not beyond the circle, trying and failing, as ever, to read the expression on Tanner's face. "So, what? You want to be the one that breaks it?"

"Not..." Tanner trailed off, his eyes on Kayden, turning towards him, his back towards the monsters moving ever closer. 

"We don't have time for this," Kayden hissed. He hadn't forgotten, couldn't forget, Tanner's last words, the complete lack of hope and the resignation in his voice, and he never wanted to hear it again, no matter whose name was mentioned.

"We've _only_ got time for this," Tanner insisted, reached out, and took hold of Kayden's shoulder.

He took hold.

Kayden froze, feeling his eyes widen, managing not to let his jaw drop. He'd never expected to feel Tanner's touch again. If he'd ever thought about it, after that first night when Tanner had appeared in his room, he'd expected any contact to be cold. Cold as the grave. Then again, Tanner had never had a grave and fuck, Kayden was babbling inside his own head and there were fucking zombies advancing on them with every ragged breath he took.

Eyes steady on Tanner's face, chest aching, Kayden swallowed hard, and drove the heel of his boot down hard on the cleansed body of Tanner's camera.

Tanner flickered, his touch disappearing then restoring on Kayden's shoulder, a spasmodic squeeze when it returned, and the anguish on Tanner's face was far too easy to read before his jaw firmed, resolute, and a second crack splintered the night as Tanner's foot landed next to Kayden's on the broken camera.

Something screamed. It was an inhuman sound, too loud and impossibly close, harmonics pulling along Kayden's spine, and his control fractured. He pounded his foot down on the camera over and over, harder and harder, every collision shuddering up his leg and jarring his body and spurring him on to stamp again, feeling the drive of Tanner's foot beside his own, beating the camera into ragged, broken shards as the screaming rose, higher and harsher until it slid past the point where Kayden could hear it. He could still feel it as a pressure inside his head, hear loud breaths mirroring his own between every crack of plastic under his boot.

Kayden didn't notice when it stopped, too intent on fully destroying every part of the camera, feeling the lens shatter under his heel before feeling Tanner - _Tanner_ \- shaking him. 

"Kayden. Kayden, you need to stop, you can stop, they've gone, it's gone, it's broken." Tanner shook him again, harder. "Don't make me slap you, I'll enjoy it too much."

"Fuck you," Kayden said weakly, and stopped, his legs shaking, his body aching, his breath still unsteady and shallow as he finally let himself look up into Tanner's face.

Tanner. Who was still there.

"Are you...?" Kayden managed, before stopping himself, because he wasn't even sure what he could ask. No point in asking whether Tanner was there, because obviously Tanner was there. Kayden could see him, feel him, hear his breath, and surely his breath meant he had to somehow be alive, because dead things didn't breathe. 

"No," Tanner said, simple and short, heartbreakingly clear. "No, I'm still... I think it's your circle. I think it's holding me here."

Kayden closed his eyes and let his head drop forwards. Of course. Of course it was the fucking circle, the one and only remaining tie, the isolated, protected spot of land keeping Tanner within. Of course he was going to have to choose when to break the circle. Of course he was going to have to be the one to banish the last trace of Tanner. "Fuck."

Tanner laughed, sudden and sounding surprised that he can still make such a sound. "Yeah."

With another ashy, smoke-filled breath, Kayden looked up, beyond Tanner, refusing to meet his eyes. Instead, he looked beyond the circle, to the point where he'd seen decaying humanoid figures, rotting walking corpses, approaching before. Nothing was there. No, not quite nothing - a single scrap of rag clung to the split in the fence, waving in the wind that Kayden was sheltered from by his circle. "Anything you want me to tell her?"

"No," Tanner said instantly. "No, not now. It's too late. It wouldn't do any good."

"It was too late last time, too," Kayden pointed out, unable to stop himself.

"Yeah, I know," Tanner said. When Kayden looks back at him, there's not a trace of regret on Tanner's face. Resignation, again, and sorrow, but no sign of regret. "I still had to tell her. I needed her to know."

"And so she found out," Kayden said, a laugh rasping at his throat, sore from the acrid smoke of Tanner's camera. "It fucked her up, you know? It really fucked her up."

"That's why I don't want you to say anything else to her," Tanner said steadily. "Not from me, anyway."

"Don't you fucking dare go all guiding spirit guardian angel on me," Kayden said swiftly, suspicion rising. "Don't give me all that... wisdom of the ages shit. All that beyond mortal concerns shit."

"I haven't got any." Tanner looked genuinely amused, which didn't do anything to soothe Kayden's temper. "Or wings or harps or anything like that. Just, I don't know, learn from my example, I guess."

"Yeah, I let my friends help instead of trying to handle shit on my own," Kayden retorted before stopping and looking around at the empty clearing. He didn't physically bite his tongue, and his body was aching too much to attempt to kick himself, but the thought was definitely there.

"Right," Tanner said with a wide grin. "Of course."

"I called Sat," Kayden said defensively. "I wouldn't have known any of this without her."

"It's a start," Tanner said, looking like on the verge of laughing, but there was something else in his expression, something Kayden couldn't quite interpret. Wasn't sure he wanted to see. "Kayden..."

"No," Kayden says, ache rising to pull at his throat. "No. Don't fucking say it."

Tanner said it anyway. "It's time. I need to go."

Kayden closed his eyes tightly, tipping his head back for a moment before exhaling in a carefully controlled, soft hiss of sound. "Yeah. I know. Tanner?"

"I know, too," Tanner promised. 

There was a faint, warm pressure on Kayden's sore right hand, nowhere near as firm as the grip on his shoulder had been. Kayden opened his eyes and looked down to see Tanner's hand wrapped around his before it slipped away again. "This is it, then?"

"Last you'll see of me," Tanner said gently. "Really, this time. Don't come back here, Kayden. Don't let any of them come back here."

"I won't." Kayden stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket, looking into Tanner's face one more time. "I won't. I mean, I can't promise I'll stop Darby, but Raina's determined to keep her away."

"That's good." Tanner moved back, glancing down at the ground at the remains of his camera, smile twisting a little. "Maybe take that with you when you go."

"As much as I can," Kayden promised. "I'll get rid of it away from here."

"Good." Tanner bit his lip, bent his head for a moment, then smiled again, still unsteady. "Okay. I don't think I can break this on my own."

"Not like the camera, right?" Kayden went to the edge of the circle, bracing himself. 

"I needed you to start that," Tanner said quietly. "And now, I need you to end it."

There had to be endings, always. This would be a better ending than Tanner's last one. Kayden slid his foot to the side, trembling hands safely hidden in his pockets, and scuffed through the line, part of him still expecting the screaming horrors to return. "Goodbye, Tanner."

There was no screaming. There were no monsters. The light, cold breeze of the night spilled into the circle, and Tanner drifted away with it.

Kayden sagged and dropped, pressing both blistered hands to the cool certainty of the ground. He couldn't, wouldn't stay long, wouldn't risk the dangers of anything else still in the park, but he took a moment before fumbling a shopping bag from his rucksack and scooping as much of the remains as he could find into it, along with a few handfuls of muddy earth. Then he dropped that into his rucksack and returned to his truck, wiped his hands off on a kleenex stuffed in the glove box, and drove as far as the first phone box he saw before pulling over and resting his head against the wheel.

Sliding the quarter into the slot, he leaned against the kiosk, counting out the rings, until he heard the receiver lift and the sound of Sat's anxious voice reciting her number.

"Sat? It's me. I'm okay." Kayden took an unsteady breath, tasting the smoke still on his clothes. "He's gone."


End file.
